hacker ethic:n.
1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic

Thursday, April 06, 2006

I seek wisdom to remember how to be a plant.

I seek wisdom to remember how to be a plant.

I don't for a moment assume you understand, do not understand, or have or have not considered these things before. Please allow me to explain myself.

We humans are endowed with a large brain. It gives us the capacity to realise untold happiness and cause endless misery. To which end we serve is our own choice in each moment. We believe in some thing existing, and then we believe in the existance of it's opposite also. Good. Bad. True. Untrue. Up. Down. Fast. Slow. We define these things quite clearly and these conceptions create our individual versions of reality. When my version is different from someone elses, there is conflict. This much is easy.

Rational thinking is a tool just like anything else, and it serves a purpose. It has created the wheel and space ships and icy poles. Many people believe science and emprical thought can bring us salvation through the understanding of our environment and that doing so gives us "progress". It certainly gives the illusion of some advancement, but I'm not sure to what end. I assert that it's dangerous to assume that rational thinking can serve all purposes, and that it's dangerous to assume that all things are systematically created such that systematic dissection by logic will distill some "truth".

To consider something, also consider that it equally isn't. A leaf is only a leaf for those precious moments in which its form is that which we commonly refer to as a "leaf". The soil which produced the leaf is no more or less leaf than the leaf itself, indeed the soil IS leaves, just as the leaves ARE soil. This at least can be scientifically prooven. So it is a leaf as it is also not a leaf. Then consider that it's both these distinctions at the same time. Do it now. Ok? Now consider that that there is no difference between these two distinctions. Wow. If you can do this, you can attain the true nature of the leaf. If you can attain the true nature of the leaf, you can attain true nature of all things. That is, that there can be no distinctions.

This world only exists because of our conception. Ultimate truth is emptiness, and it has no opposite. It cannot be attained using a rational mode of thinking. To assume that our vague approximations of scientific truth somehow allude to ultimate truth is a fallacy we inherit from society at large. I like many before me refute this inheritance.

I speak to you rationally because we understand rational thinking. But I assert we don't need rational thinking in order to understand. So use it wiseley.